Wednesday Writer’s Workshop: Purpose, or Why Do You Write?

Writing isn’t some mysterious phenomenon that happens when the good fairy graces you with her presence.  It isn’t some arcane procedure that only dead white males (and a few chosen, but robust females) are truly capable of.  Writing is just another form of communication, plain and simple, a way of getting across meaning using words on the page. That being the case, unless you’re Emily Dickenson blissfully penning poems in your bedroom, there are certain conventions that you’d be wise to follow.

First of these is that there is some purpose to what you’re writing—and you better know what it is at least by the time you begin your final rewrite.  Second, that there is an audience for your writing.  Not some amorphous They Out There, but real people (even if they exist only in your imagination) that you are writing to.  Third, there is a message that you are looking to get across to that audience.  Finally, there is your persona as a writer, the you that comes across on the page, your Voice for that particular piece of prose.

Purpose, audience, message, persona: they are woven together, sometimes interdependent, but the greatest of these—at least for today—is

Purpose

Why do you write?  No, really—why do you write?  Let’s make this even more specific:  Why do you blog?  It does make a difference, you know: your Purpose in writing a piece engages almost every aspect of the process and in the end, it affects the success–or not–of your work.

Here are some possible ways to fill in the blank in

I write ____________
  • To convince
  • To entertain
  • To inform
  • To share
  • To explore a topic
  • To explain

Obviously, a single piece of writing can have more than one purpose.  Take this post that I’m writing right now.  My purposes are To Inform and To Convince.  However, To Convince is the secondary, and less important, purpose.   I’ve written, over the years, a number of posts on ByJane about writing.  Going back through them, I see that my primary purpose in them was To Share my feelings as a writer .   Here’s one, On Writing, that I wrote over a year ago.  Can you see the difference in purpose between  that one and this post I’m writing today?  And can you see how that difference affects the other three aspects of the writing process for each post?  Look at them; then tell me what  you see–and what you think.

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  • http://www.duchessomnium.com Duchess

    Oh, I don’t agree! I certainly do not aspire to be a humour blogger. In fact I don’t think I have ever found one so described to be tolerable, let alone engaging.

    But you might be right. I am not clear that my theory is working; I am beginning to think that my incorrigible addiction to irony does not work at all over the internet.

    • http://midlifebloggers.com byjane

      Duchess: Joining IA then, are you? I attend the Meetings myself! But–my comment wasn’t about you being a humor writer (perish the thought!) but about humor writers in general. The ones I know put their all into being entertaining–and some of them really are.

  • http://mermaidmusings.blogspot.com LizLSB

    Very apt description of purpose, audience, message, and persona. If I could get all of my Creative Writing students to grasps these basics, I would enjoy reading their writing more. Duchess is right about engagement; whether your purpose is to entertain, to convince, or to inform, you must grab the reader’s attention or you’re doomed.

    • http://midlifebloggers.com byjane

      LizLSB:
      The aptness comes from years of trying to beat it into the heads of my writing students. I keep thinking that I will find that one way to say it that they will finally ‘get’. More fool me….

  • http://www.duchessomnium.com Duchess

    I pretty much think if I can’t manage entertain I should go home. You probably won’t get very far informing or convincing, for example, if you cannot first engage.

    • http://midlifebloggers.com byjane

      Duchess:
      Entertaining as a primary purpose in writing is the province of the humor bloggers. That’s different from the issue of engaging one’s audience, which is a whole different ball game (as we Yanks say).

  • Lia

    The message, tone and voice in each post is vastly different. In the current post, you are in command of your writing and inform the audience, which could be an audience of any type of writer, what it takes to write. In last year’s post, you share your thoughts and feelings to a limited audience, e.g., me, who does not have command of their writing. Last year’s post left me thinking “so now what do I do- how do I do this”? This current post tells me how. Thanks.

    • http://midlifebloggers.com byjane

      Lia,
      Bingo! The persona of the writer is a function of the Purpose. It’s interesting that the ByJane post left you feeling somewhat insecure, since I was feeling that way myself.

  • http://www.thefiftyfactor.com Joanna Jenkins

    Thank you Jane. This is a terrific series.

    In this post, I view your purpose as teaching/informing us of the writing process and the necessity to understand why we write and “what’s our point”.

    In the ByJane post I see your purpose as explaining your concerns/uncertainty about your writing abilities.

    In other words one purpose is to “inform” the other purpose is to “question”.

    ???

    • http://midlifebloggers.com byjane

      Joanna,

      Actually, my purpose was to share my feelings about my writing abilities. That post started as, as so many of my ByJane blog posts did, with me being in one place and then writing myself to another. That’s the nature of a lot of blog posts, but it’s not a great way to teach about something, which is what I’m doing with the Wednesday Writer’s Workshops.

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